The third annual Irish VFX and Animation Summit took place over the weekend at Google's The Foundry headquarters and we were once again delighted with the incredible line-up of industry heavyweights who shared their insights and experiences in the industry with us!

The creative-inspired, tech and innovation-fuelled conference has us buzzing, with VR standing out as the word of the weekend!

This year's summit boasted event speakers President of Pixar Animation Studios Jim Morris, CG Supervisor at Framestore Neil Weatherley, Rewind FX Founder Solomon Rogers and Creative Director for Windmill Lane Pictures Graham Gallagher!

Check out our highlights from the event:

Neil Weatherley, Framestore - The Martian

Framestore CG Supervisor Neil Weatherley gave a terrific overview of the VFX work involved in Ridley Scott's The Martian - faking zero gravity, the making of Earth and the red planet itself, Mars. And how sometimes real footage can look too CG!

Graham Gallagher, Windmill Lane Pictures - Journey from Classic 2D to VFX

Creative Director at Windmill Lane Pictures Graham Gallagher went through his impressive portfolio of work recounting his experiences on Guardians of the Galaxy, Gravity and various Disney projects. Giving a great insight into his transition from 2D to 3D and the importance of thumbnails in mapping out a story now matter what medium.

Emma Rooney/Liam Neville, Egg VFX - Anatomy of a Ghost

VFX Producer Emma Rooney and VFX Supervisor/Head of Visual Effects Liam Neville gave an indepth look at the character development and VFX workflow for the character of Hugo in feature film Ghosthunters. Detailing the process from the intial concept sketches through to the final CG render explaining how the team made both creative and technical decisions based on their schedule and budget.

Solomon Rogers, Rewind VR - Red Bull, Bjork and the BBC VR

VR - the buzz word of the weekend seriously stirred up the senses and imaginations as Rewind VR's Sol Rogers detailed their experiences producing world class VR. With the looming release of the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung gear VR and the already accessible Google Cardboard, VR is soon to be a household staple and the push for content and innovation in storytelling is mounting.

We also got a chance to try out the VR headsets!

Jim Morris, Pixar - The Good Dinosaur

President of Pixar Animation Studios, Jim Morris gave a snapshot history of the ever growing field of VFX and animation from his experiences at Lucasfilm Ltd, Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar. From the early morphing effects used in Terminator 2 and The Abyss, the animatronics and CG effects combo's used in Jurassic Park to the fully CG world's of Pixar's Toy Story and beyond, the constant progress made in the VFX industry is mesmerising and forever opening up the possibility of new worlds to explore!

Anil Kokaram, Google - YouTube + Content

Trinity College Professor and YouTube/Google Tech Lead Anil Kokaram provided a detailed technical overview of the constant development and growth in video quality for YouTube. The challenges of mastering both reach and quality for streaming content and the future - 360 video, 8K video and beyond!

Big THANKS to Eoghan Cunneen, Laura Livingstone and the rest of the VFX Summit team for organising a terrific event!

We're already looking forward to next year :)